The eyes of Tamura Akiko are blessed.
Some lovingly reference ginko leaves, chrysanthemums; others bitterly reference topaz.
She thinks of lemon macrons and the glow of a lamp, as childish as she is.
Her fiance references the rising sun, amber, a...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Tanjirou can hear Akiko singing.
Now, Akiko isn't the greatest singer.
In terms of talent, she's on par with Tanjirou. She can never grasp rhythms or hear notes in her head, and she can't even repeat songs that are taught to her.
The only thing she can sing is the old lullaby Kie taught Tanjirou and she.
"Knock knock little bunny from the little mountain," Kie would start, and she can see the small heads from under the futon pop up in excitement.
"Why are your ears so long!!" The two would yell, with no particular sense of the melody. Nezuko isn't a big fan of the two singing, and she'd tell them that they're doing it all wrong, and Akiko isn't a big fan of being told that she's wrong.
"When she was small, my mother ate the leaves of a tall tree and that is why my ears are so long," Akiko struggles to sing out, and Tanjirou claps his hands with glee.
They'd beg Kie to sing the lullaby over and over again, and with new siblings to sing to, Kie didn't mind at all. Tanjirou would hum to Akiko and he wouldn't be able to match the same notes, but they're trying together.
"Knock knock, little bunny from the little mountain."
Tanjirou and Akiko would whisper the words to themselves, hands held together and nodding on the offbeat before stopping and repeating the words again.
Akiko even goes as far as to ask her parents for a music teacher in Tokyo, but no music teacher accepts the mess that is Akiko.
"Why are your eyes so red?" The two try with Takeo, Shigeru, and Hanako.
But they'll shake their heads and run away, clutching their ears with false pain just to poke fun at how awful Akiko and Tanjirou are at singing.
So Nezuko becomes the official singer of the family, her voice so fluid to listen to that everyone feels as if they're being cradled by the stars.
Later, Tanjirou would listen to Nezuko, Akiko no longer by his side. He'd listen to Nezuko and ask both his mother and she to sing to him, claiming that he wants to sing to Akiko one day.
Their hearts would melt, and they'd sing for him, encouraging Tanjirou to sing along with them.
"When she was small, my mother ate the fruit of a red tree," Tanjirou finishes singing to Akiko, and her eyes shine as bright as the morning sun.
He's finally learned the song, and now it's Akiko's turn to catch up.
So he patiently teachers her, the two singing together with Tanjirou acting as a crutch. They'd lay under the trees and look up at the sky, lazily mumbling the words then moving on to play with everyone else, but they'd always come back to each other to learn the lullaby.
